As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change • Hacker News Board

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#121

Post by bigtunacan » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 1:01 AM UTC

omouse wrote: post #88

bigtunacan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine was more along the lines of, "I'm going to make so much money cleaning that shit up."

You're going to need a lot of booze or drugs or to cap the time you do that. It can get real frustrating real fast despite the gigantic checks.

Definitely gets frustrating, but I've done plenty of "cleanup" contract work. Usually someone (business person) without technical knowledge hired the cheapest outsourcing they can find. Money has been sunk, and often there is 80 to 90% of a finished project, but the original contractor doesn't have enough experience to get it that last mile.

It's frustrating work, but it's also gravy train. When I get that call they are desperate and coming in on referral where someone has said, "I know a guy that's a finisher, but he's really going to cost you."

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#122

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 1:08 AM UTC

mycelium wrote: post #119

ryandrake wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep going up until the candidate pool improves? Just a personal anecdote: Even though I loved writing software, I moved up and away from development (after 12+ years) mostly because of the salary ceiling we all inevitably eventually hit. But I keep my skills sharp and would always go back for the right price. $150K would definitely not be the right price, at least not in the Bay Area. My guess is there are tons of g…

Thanks for the willingness to discuss actual numbers. Using the BLS stats tool that falsestprophet linked below [1] I dug up some numbers. This is for the the "Software Developers, Applications" occupation: Area median 75%ile 90%ile Chicago, IL Metropolitan $88,630 $109,640 $126,370 Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan $102,310 $126,340 $150,320 San Francisco, CA Metropolitan $112,570 $143,390 $174,120 San Jose-Sunnyvale-San…

Ahh, midwest changes the equation for sure. Maybe try disclosing a salary _range_ in the description? Without knowing the details of the job, it's hard to tell if there's something in the description driving interest away. If it's exactly like cairo140's job, it may be simply too much for a single person. Here's what he/she was asking for, and I'll take a stab at breaking it down into the fewest mere-mortal-sized job reqs that I can:

Role 1: top to bottom web app security, server ops, zero downtime rollouts, performance and architecture (shared)

Role 2: metrics/instrumentation, fully-independent backend, HTML/CSS/JS skills, integrating third-party modules, performance and architecture (shared)

Role 3: managing technical vendor relationships, work the indirectly technical parts, technical hiring, capacity planning, expectations management, performance and architecture (shared)

These are still three pretty loaded-up people! Even if there was one person capable of and willing to do this all, their current job title is likely "founder of their own startup".

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#123

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 1:13 AM UTC

PopeOfNope wrote: post #115

ryandrake wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree if they were talking bout "top" developers. But, not everyone needs top developers. Lots of people are simply saying We can't find developers, period, which is baffling, until you find out what they're offering in terms of comp.

Tomato, tomahto. He said "talented" developers and he also said they make offers to 1 in 5 candidates. Based on that, it sounds like they have a steady pool of candidates, so by definition they can find "developers." They reject 80% of them for some reason. Either their hiring process weeds out good candidates, their funnel isn't attracting the right kinds of devs to begin with, or there's an X factor, like they're l…

> I chose to take the job where I wasn't humiliated during the interview.

It's funny how this is a legitimate filter, from the job-seeker's point of view. And, by "funny" I mean "a sad testament to SV tech interviews".

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#124

Post by mycelium » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 1:47 AM UTC

boomshucka wrote: post #118

mycelium wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me out of dreamland. I've got some money. I want good help, but I'm a dev and this is my first time hiring. What compensation range would you expect for the type of developer in cairo140's description? I'm in the midwest for reference, but hiring remotely in the bay area is legit too.

Try 250k and see the responses.

Cool, thank you for the concrete number.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#125

Post by fweespeech » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 2:18 AM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #76

fweespeech wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are that expensive and you are having that kind of trouble...maybe try remote hires? $100k for a remote hire mid-career developer shouldn't be hard to find.

Some companies just aren't set up to handle remote developers. Based on my experience, it takes a certain mindset and tooling to make remote development work. I don't know about the GP's situation, however.

Yeah, it was just a suggestion.

Remote work at 6 figures is still worth it and widens the pool alot.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#126

Post by ellio » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 2:39 AM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #48

I for one think this trend is great. We need more developers. But... I lived through the last boom when it seemed anyone who could spell 'java' was hired as a developer. (OK, it wasn't that bad, but there was definitely a giant sucking sound as folks were pulled into technology for the money.) I hope this time is different.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on how to be a good developer. I fall into this group and I'm entirely self-taught. I've been following the Free Code Camp curriculum while also working through some Linux books and Shaw's "Learn C the Hard Way." It's difficult for me to know what things I might be missing--the classic "unknown unknowns"--and I'd like to close whayever gaps there might be.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#127

Post by mycelium » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 2:54 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #122

mycelium wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the willingness to discuss actual numbers. Using the BLS stats tool that falsestprophet linked below [1] I dug up some numbers. This is for the the "Software Developers, Applications" occupation: Area median 75%ile 90%ile Chicago, IL Metropolitan $88,630 $109,640 $126,370 Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan $102,310 $126,340 $150,320 San Francisco, CA Metropolitan $112,570 $143,390 $174,120 San Jose-Sunnyvale-San…

Ahh, midwest changes the equation for sure. Maybe try disclosing a salary _range_ in the description? Without knowing the details of the job, it's hard to tell if there's something in the description driving interest away. If it's exactly like cairo140's job, it may be simply too much for a single person. Here's what he/she was asking for, and I'll take a stab at breaking it down into the fewest mere-mortal-sized job…

> Even if there was one person capable of and willing to do this all, their current job title is likely "founder of their own startup".

I'm doing a decent chunk of that, aware of the parts I'm doing shitty, and that is my job title. :)

I was talking recruiting with a mentor. He said some of his best hires were founders he met at startup events looking to regroup and earn a paycheck after the failure of their own startup. Dark—but insightful.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#128

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 2:57 AM UTC

mycelium wrote: post #119

ryandrake wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep going up until the candidate pool improves? Just a personal anecdote: Even though I loved writing software, I moved up and away from development (after 12+ years) mostly because of the salary ceiling we all inevitably eventually hit. But I keep my skills sharp and would always go back for the right price. $150K would definitely not be the right price, at least not in the Bay Area. My guess is there are tons of g…

Thanks for the willingness to discuss actual numbers. Using the BLS stats tool that falsestprophet linked below [1] I dug up some numbers. This is for the the "Software Developers, Applications" occupation: Area median 75%ile 90%ile Chicago, IL Metropolitan $88,630 $109,640 $126,370 Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan $102,310 $126,340 $150,320 San Francisco, CA Metropolitan $112,570 $143,390 $174,120 San Jose-Sunnyvale-San…

Also, my guess would be that the median numbers reported by BLS include many people who have had the same job for 5-10 years and are being paid 2005-level salaries and not 2015 levels. In an upward-trending market, averages/medians over the entire employment base will under-estimate the current market rate.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#129

Post by cairo140 » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 3:32 AM UTC

bcassedy wrote: post #99

cairo140 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly, someone who at the start can work independently on an existing business-critical[1], medium-sized[2] app to first fix bugs without adding major tech debt[3] and then take features from planning to deployment/maintenance, and then ultimately (6-12 months, since we were a very small shop), independently steer architecture and be solo on call. [1] hundreds of thousands in sales a day [2] around 10-50k LOC, but…

That certainly sounds like a more senior role. My take on bootcamp grads (I am one), is that the purpose is to make them a competitive or superior option to a fresh CS grad. How does that expectation compare to your experience?

Yeah "hit the ground running" was decidedly not the standard for bootcamp grads. This was our more senior unicorn hire. Like any shop though we did have simpler more isolated work that was still needing doing, so we pared those off for grads.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#130

Post by cairo140 » Wed, Jul 29, 2015, 3:44 AM UTC

PopeOfNope wrote: post #104

cairo140 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt similarly incredulous when we first started searching. I'll add some details for color. Our hiring needs didn't feel too crazy to me. We were a multi-million dollar a year e-commerce shop, I was the first in-house technical hire, and we wanted to expand the team for personnel redundancy. Ideally, we wanted someone who would be capable of running a business-critical website. On the technical side, I was hoping…

Just out of curiosity, What's your hiring process look like? We were a multi-million dollar a year e-commerce shop top to bottom web app security, server ops, managing technical vendor relationships and integrating third-party modules, zero downtime rollouts, performance and architecture, metrics/instrumentation, and fully-independent backend and HTML/CSS/JS skills to build a secure and pixel-perfect feature beginnin…

We gave candidates an option of a take-home screen (build a web app that consumes our single-endpoint JSON/XML API and renders content) or a live coding exercise (implement a least-recently-used key value cache to store 100 entries). Folks who could basically code did a 3/4 day onsite that included a code review of their interview project or an applied exercise if they did the live coding. Offer out within 24 hours after the onsite. Any recommendations to improve that process would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback about the 4-6 engineer's worth of talents. It's good to know, and we realized a similar thing and pared down the JD to be less oppressive-sounding.

Sleep and balance was important to the team (I personally averaged around 35-45 hours a week, working one weekend and being called in maybe a half dozen times over a year and a half; the system mostly runs itself), but we didn't find a good way to surface it in the description. Any suggestions on this is appreciated too. I struggled in that when we removed or played down aspects of the job, or emphasized work-life balance, we just got more folks who were seriously green in some parts (front-end devs who can pull together jQuery but have never deployed their own code or had to write backwards-compatible apps).